Welcome to the class blog of Ben Villarreal's Freshman English 12 Course: Visual and Verbal Literacies! Here you'll find the thoughts, ideas, and burgeoning written work from our class about the multiple literacies we experience.

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09 June 2010

Blog 2

The experience that I have had with comics is purely based on the cheap laughs I, or others have known through the expense of the comic strips that are always printed onto the last page of some newspaper section and only seldon seen when someone leaves the paper folded forward exposing the "funnies", as we called them. I never once wondered about the question "Can comics be art?" I always just assumes the answer was "yes" based solely on the fact that they are cartoons, and cartoons are always art, right? I say right and I hope to be concurred with because "art" is such an open term and I agree with the personal definition given in the book, "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction." this definition opens a path for anything outside of sexual activity, breathing and eating to be considered art; and who is to say it isn't? One man's trash is another man's art. "...because the creation of any work in any medium will always follow a certain path." This said path consists six steps: 1. Idea/Purpose. 2.Form. 3. Idiom. 4. Structure. 5. Craft. 6.Surface. These steps don't always have to follow this direct route when ideas are free flowing in an artist's mind, or any person's mind for that matter. As the book describes "The order of the six steps is innate. Like the arrangement of bones in a dinosaur's skeleton they can be discovered in any order but when brought together, they will always fall into place!" This metaphor helped me to better understand the purpose of the six steps and how they are applied to the mixture of creation. Your mind is your own personal area for anything you want to imagine or think up, here in your realm you don't have to worry about discrimination, criticism, or any misrepresentation of misinterpritation because it's all common language to you. You know what you mean and what point you are trying to make. The problem facing any and all artists how are they going to make people (the audience) understand what the voice of their art is saying because in essence it is like translating a foreign language. "There's only one power that can break through the wall which seperates all artists from their audience-the power of understanding." Once the wall of ignorance is broken down like the Berlin wall by the hammer of communication, then and only then can comics be fully appreciated and understood for the true expressionism they represent and the raw talent that goes into making every strip. but until then the pilgrimage of the comic continues...